Sacrilege

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Sacrilege biography

There are at least three artists by this name:
1) A crust punk / thrash metal / doom metal band from England.
2) An old school melodic death metal band from Sweden.
3) A doom Metal band from Italy.
1) The British Sacrilege was a female-fronted metal band from the Midlands region of England. Despite having played relatively few gigs during their existence, Sacrilege is today recognised as an important band, both as an influence on later and doom metal bands and as an example of the blending of hardcore punk, radical politics, and heavy metal that occurred during the 1980s, making Sacrilege one of the prototypical bands of the time.
Prior to the formation of Sacrilege, guitarist Damian Thompson,drummer Andy Baker released a pair of hardcore punk demos under the moniker Warwound. In 1983, the duo joined the Varukers, Damian left the Varukers in 1984 to form Sacrilege. In 1984 and '85, the band recorded demos and contributed tracks to the compilations "We Won't Be Your Fucking Poor" (Mortarhate, 1985) and "Anglican Scrape Attic" (a pre-Earache release from Digby Pearson)
After replacing drummer Liam Pickering with Andy Baker, Sacrilege recorded their first album, "Behind the Realms of Madness", in 1985, which was released through the Bristol-based label Children of the Revolution Records. The album was moderately successful, selling a respectable 7000 copies. Shortly after this, the band brought in former Warhammer member Mitch Dickinson on second guitar, although he never played live with the band and he soon left to join hardcore punk group Heresy and later Unseen Terror.
Their second release, "within the prophecy", was recorded in January 1987 at Birmingham's Rich Bitch Studios with Rob Bruce and producer Mike Ivory. It was released later that year through Under One Flag Records, a subsidiary of Music for Nations. Sacrilege underwent a significant line-up change at this juncture, replacing drummer Andy Baker with Paul Brookes, bassist Tony May with Paul Morrisey and adding rhythm guitarist Frank Healey. After a further change, this time replacing Paul Brookes with new drummer Spikey T. Smith, the new line-up recorded the band's third album, "Turn Back Trilobite", issued in April 1989. This record saw the band moving away from their thrash metal roots into a more doom metal musical direction, with touches of folk. Sacrilege split up quietly in the early 1990s.
After Sacrilege, Frank Healy and Andy Baker would go on to join Cerebral Fix, with Healy later joining Benediction and Baker also playing in an early incarnation of Cathedral. Paul Brookes would also join Benediction and then metal act Marshall Law in 1999.
Cerebral Fix covered Sacrilege's "The Closing Irony" on their 1990 album "Tower of Spite", suitably using it as the final track and making a slight name alteration, "Closing Irony".
Sacrilege's first two albums were re-released unofficially through Blackend Records in 1996.
Re-formed in 2014 with the same last line-up of Lynda 'Tam' Simpson-Vocals/Damian Thompson-Guitar/ Frank Healy-Bass/Spike T Smith-Drums. Re-Release of Behind the Realms of Madness due Summer (on Relapse Records) 2015 to mark the albums 30th anniversary. Bonus tracks of new and previouslt unheard material will be included. The band are also working on an album of all new material. More information and taster tracks can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sacrilege-Official/503256849820198
2) The Swedish Sacrilege, now known as Sacrilege GBG, is an old school melodic death metal band from Sweden, formed in 1993by Daniel Svensson (vocals, drums) and Daniel Dinsdale (guitar).
After having sacked and replaced some members, the band ended up recording their first demo, “To Where Light Can´t Reach” in early 1995. Shortly after, the band entered Studio Fredman to record their second demo called “…and Autumn Failed”. It was highly appreciated by many, especially by Black Sun, who got interested in the so far unknown band.
As Sacrilege reached the semi-final as the first death metal band ever in the Gothenburg rock competition “Rockslaget”, Black Sun decided to sign the band. In the summer of 1996 they recorded their full-length debut “Lost In The Beauty You Slay” in Studio Fredman. The album was released in October the same year. “Lost in the beauty you slay” gained Sacrilege many fans around the world with their great songs and beautiful melodies mixed with sheer brutality. An extra touch was added by Daniel Svensson's extremely dark and high vocal style.
A year later Sacrilege had grown both as songwriters and musicians and in July 1997 they recorded their second album, “The Fifth Season”, a far more technical, heavy, brutal, faster and better album. Once again Sacrilege received great reviews all over the world. In January, Sacrilege went on a German tour together with The Crown. On this tour, Tomas Lindberg of At The Gates fame did the vocals for the band, as Daniel Svensson had some difficulties with both singing and playing drums at the same time.
Shortly after the tour, Daniel Svensson helped In Flames’ songwriter/guitarist Jesper Strömblad by doing vocals for a song Jesper recorded with his project Dimension Zero. This contact led to Svensson being offered to play the drums for In Flames. Svensson accepted. This, of course, was a great setback for Sacrilege, since they now had to find both a drummer and a singer. After more than year of searching, the band decided to quit, being unable to find valid replacements. So, this was the end of one of the most respected melodic death metal bands in the underground scene. Or was it really?
The band reformed under the name of "Sacrilege GBG" in 2006. They are currently working on new Sacrilege material for an upcoming third studio album which will feature the original line-up with Daniel Svensson, Daniel Dinsdale, Richard Bergholtz and Daniel Kvist.
The band’s statement: “No release date is set yet and there’s no way in hell we’ll stress this third release. But know this, we are working night and day on these new songs. Keep your eyes and ears open.”.
3) In 1987 an obscure Italian Doom Metal band released the demo-tape simply called "Demo". The line-up consisted in vocalist Luca Gorna, guitarist Nicola Murari and drummer Mauro Tollini. The two last aforementioned members had connections to Italian bands, 80s Horror maniacs Black Hole and Epitaph formed in the 90s.